It is clear that, by any standard, dabkeh is an important aspect of Palestinian identity and culture. As shown in in the word cloud, Israeli and Palestinian culture are intimately connected, in both positive and negative contexts, and one often overlooked aspect of this connection is music and dance. As the Israeli people created a national culture, sometimes in organic ways and often more purposefully, they often borrowed elements from the culture of their Palestinian co-inhabitants. While there is nothing inherently wrong with cultures appreciating aspects of other cultures, in this particular case, many Palestinians view Israel’s use of dabkeh as a form of hostile cultural appropriation and even cultural colonialism. At the same time that Israelis have been perceived as marginalizing and oppressing Palestinians politically, they have also incorporated parts of Palestinian culture - such as dabkeh - into their own, and this has been unsurprisingly viewed with resentment. This work is important not only because it helps to establish the distinctly Palestinian nature of dabkeh, but also in that it remarks on the Zionist objective of denying the existence of a Palestinian state in order to lay claim to a past, culture, and way of being that is not solely their own. Palestinians are still experiencing this dance form as a living, ongoing part of their culture, which is being threatened as their authority over their own narrative continues to diminish. Like so many aspects of the relationship between these countries, the use of dabkeh is complex and defies simple answers, but this project aims to provide leading academic thought surrounding the subject to offer scholars a platform in which they can locate useful information to continue research on this topic. Broader research questions could include: In what ways do assimilatory tactics of power dilute or cement the existence of dance traditions? To what extent does the appropriation of dabkeh by Jewish settlers in Israel (as argued for by my sources) undermine the political and social autonomy of native communities? How can we foster cultural diversity and inclusion through the arts without generating a sense of disappearance or erasure? All are fertile grounds for future research that I hope researchers explore in the near future.